The Hole in the World
by GougeAway
Summary: 'Where you used to be there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the day time and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.' A short three-shot about life, death and rebirth. IchiRuki and RenRuki, or OT3 if you want.
1. we

_(A/N.: Blah blah blah, Bleach isn't mine, obviously, because it's on . Do we really need to write these things? Am I really going to be chased by Kubo firing flaming issues of Shonen Jump at me if I don't write this? Aw, piss off.)_

_"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world,_

_Which I find myself constantly walking around in the day time_

_And falling into at night._

_I miss you like hell."_

_ - Edna St. Vincent Millay_

There's a hole in the world.

Ichigo skirts around it during the day. He averts his eyes. Holds his breath. Pretends to anyone who looks at him just a second too long, or with an ounce too much of pity, that it doesn't exist. That there is no hole. That his skies are cloudless and blue, that it hasn't rained in years. He pretends Inoue's smile is bright and genuine as ever, that Ishida's shoulders are slumped through mere tiredness, that Chad's unwavering presence at his side is loyalty, and not worry. He pretends that he doesn't wake up some nights at the sound of a certain voice, or that he doesn't linger just a moment longer than necessary when taking a shirt from his closet. That he doesn't absently look for a head of raven hair resting on tiny shoulders in crowds on city streets, or that his throat doesn't clench strangely whenever he opens a juice box.

There is a hole in the world. Ichigo finds himself constantly walking around it in the day time, and falling into it at night. At night, there is no school, college, work, friends or family to distract him. Ichigo can only lie in his bed, with his eyes staring into the dark, and speak to her.

Oh, he knows. He knows it's insane. He knows she can't hear him, and that he can't feel her in this or any other world, anymore, but _god_, she is _here_, to him, somehow. And he so badly just needs her to hear him. He tells her about the world of the living, and how is family are doing. What their friends have been up to, what he's been up to. And then the small talk dies in his throat and he sobs.

If he could rip through the fabric of the world and grab her, just for one minute, for one moment, it might be enough. If he could just hold her tiny little face in his hands and breathe her in, just for one minute, and hear her call him a fool just one more time, he would give entire worlds and his whole soul and everything in between.

Where she used to be, where her reiatsu used to ebb and flow against his own like a breeze, even when she was an entire world apart from him - there is nothing. Something terrible and unmentionable has separated them so far that he can't reach her, can't even feel her, no matter how desperately he wants to or how much his soul screams and cries and rages for him to do something.

Ichigo knows he has lived without her once before. When he could see spirits, could touch them, speak with them, but nothing more. When he couldn't protect or save. When it rained all day, every day, and he hid himself behind a guarded scowl and blamed himself for all that he didn't have the power to prevent. That was life before Rukia crashed into it. Destiny was made of gears and Ichigo was the sand in between, torn apart and powerless, until a tiny woman flew through his window and tore into his head, turning the gears the opposite way. Ichigo knows he lived without Rukia once, what feels like lifetimes ago; ignorant of her existence and the experience of how one person can save another so completely, and he wishes he didn't have to again.

For all the nights he has done this, Rukia has never replied. And yet, there's that voice in Ichigo that tells him to keep going. To keep fighting. It calls him a fool when he has been reckless, and gently but firmly tells him _this, too, will pass _when the rain is particularly heavy. He can't see her, or feel her anymore, or even taste her in the air around him, but he can hear her in the space between his conscience and his common sense. She's curled up in the corners of his soul, dormant, waking in him when he needs her. In a way, she does replies, always.

There is a hole in the world.

Renji stares into it and dares it, curses it, screams at it. Begs it to take him too. It is deep, dark, and all encompassing - a hurricane that started turning sometime after they left the Rukongai and he lost her that first time, he knows, and grows more overwhelming with every rotation. It twists and expands. Looms over him and settles on him like a weight.

Sometimes it feels like arms. He pretends they're hers.

When Renji tears his eyes from it, he sometimes sees her brother looking at him. He knows Byakuya has suffered too, and that this is not the first time he has had to mourn, but Renji never meets his eyes in return. He resents them too much. He resents Byakuya and his cold, slate eyes, and his indifferent stare and hard expressions, because in them he sees _Kuchiki_ Rukia. In the slight frown Byakuya shoots his lieutenant, meant to convey a measure of understanding, Renji only sees the cold, hard eyes of a woman who resolutely accepted her own impending demise without complaint. He sees a lost, lonely girl with Kuchiki nobility and grace thrust haphazardly on her tiny shoulders. He sees the person she became when he lost her to Byakuya Kuchiki, the man he worked like hell to catch up to for forty years just to see _his_ Rukia again.

There is a hole in the world, and Renji wishes it would swallow him. He has never lived in a world where she didn't exist. He can't remember his life before she came into it. Sometimes, when the hole in the world expands, the hurricane getting darker and heavier and sadder, he doesn't think he had one. He sits on a hill in District 78, West Rukongai, where three graves – four – reside, and he knows she was the reason he existed. Renji has always firmly believed he was born the instant Rukia swept under an angry street vendor's feet and told him to run with her, and as a result has never resented the fact that he has built his life entirely around her. Every struggle for food, every fight for survival, every achievement he has ever clawed his way towards, he did it all for her.

And he would do it all again, an infinite number of times over, if he could only just turn back time and stay in Inuzuri with her forever. He would fight tooth and nail for food and water every day, he'd live a life without better spiritual pressure, he'd move whole worlds and swallow fire if it meant he could go back to that damn slum in Inuzuri, where the dirt shifts under his feet and the walls are damp to touch, with her, for just one more day. Because when Renji is honest with himself and the Rukia he clings to in his nightmares, he wishes they had never left. He wishes they had stayed in that crumbling city, because even when Inuzuri was at its' worst, even when the bloodshed was unbearable and when time had taken the rest of their family away from them, they always had each other. He always had her.

He never sees _her _in Byakuya's _Kuchiki_ stare. Not the real Rukia. Not the one he left behind in Inuzuri. Not the one with a smile too big for her face and a voice too loud for her tiny body. Who took down a street vendor to save some street rats and their jug of clean water. Climbed the tallest trees to pick the best apples. Whose calloused little hands helped him build a makeshift fireplace in the corner of their home, helped him cook the fish he caught himself in the river. The girl who cried when Haru caught a rabbit and refused to eat it. Rukia, whose laugh was the single greatest sound he had ever heard. Who would stand up to her chest in a river full of floating lilies. Rukia, their center. Huddled in the middle of their family, crowded around her at night to keep her warm with their only two blankets. Rukia, shaking and chattering and clinging to him at night, against the air rushing through the cracks in the wall, when all the rest were gone and she was all he had left in the world. Rukia, the one thing he loved about Inuzuri.

Rukia, who crashed into his world like a comet and left him howling after her long after she faded away.

There is a hole in the world.

She doesn't understand it. It's an emptiness that has always existed inside her, unwelcome and illogical, and she can't pinpoint it or understand where it comes from. She was born into a normal family, with all the ups and downs a teenager can expect. She is loved, protected and liked. She hasn't suffered unspeakable tragedy or had her heart broken. And this feeling, this void in her, frustrates her.

There's a hole in the world. It's not crushing or debilitating. It's not overwhelming or distressing, or even heavy. It's just there. It's more a feeling of anticipation than one of despair. It's longing. Waiting. A growing sense that something, somewhere in the ground beneath her feet, is shifting. Something is turning. And, not really understanding how, or why, she has waited for this her whole life.

If destiny is made of gears, she feels like the sand caught between. She knows, inexplicably, that she is waiting for someone to turn the gears the opposite way and change her world. It will happen.

She feels like the dog howling at the moon, and knows without reason or explanation, that she'll reach it.

-end.


	2. are

_(A/N: I didn't want to make this more than a one-shot, but I refuse to let Ichigo and Renji be without Rukia for too long so I had to conclude this story nicely. I actually felt guilty towards three fictional characters, Sister Jude ain't got nothing on me. Anyway, this is part 2 of 3. Try to enjoy. Try really, really hard.)_

-3

The hole in the world is shrinking.

The first time Ichigo feels it, it is six years, ten months and four days since he lost her. It's a flicker; just the barest whisper of ice on the wind. It's winter and Karakura is blanketed by snow, so he swallows his shock and rationalises it must be the weather. He tells himself that the sharp January chill is the culprit behind the cold he tastes in the air, the ice sliding down the back of his throat; behind the sudden jolt of fire in his chest, like a spark of life, and the face it all conjures in his mind. Because, as soon as it happens, it's gone again.

Ichigo shuffles onwards, thick boots scuffing the sidewalk and the slump in his shoulders heavier than ever, and reminds himself that no amount of wishing can bring her back.

-3

The hole in the world is shrinking.

The first time Renji feels it, he is kneeled on a hill on the outskirts of Inuzuri, and feels a chill wash over him that has nothing to do with the cool night air or the painful presence of the four memorials before him. It whispers against the rigid line of his jaw and seeps into his skin like ice, sinking into his tired bones and sparking something in him back to life, a feeling of being alive that he hasn't in six years, ten months and four days. It's gone before he can close his eyes and savour the familiarity of it.

Renji curls up beside her grave and dreams about Inuzuri that night, and knows, without reason or logic, that somewhere in the universe, something has clicked back into place.

-3

The hole in the world is shrinking.

The second time Ichigo feels it, there is no denying it. He can't attribute it to the weather or the seasons this time. Beneath the burning July sun, cold coils around him like icy ribbons and the blinding nostalgia in the pit of his stomach has returned with a vengeance. It's not a flicker anymore, it's not a fleeting whisper in the cold winter wind. It is solid to him, real, something almost tangible. He feels that if he could just reach out far enough, he could brush it with his fingertips.

And he doesn't want to think he's right, because if he's wrong and he's deluding himself and it's not her - but god, _god_ he wants to be right. He wants to close his eyes and see that crimson ribbon trailing in front of him, so close he could grab it with both hands and pull it. He wants to pull himself to her wherever she is, in whatever world he can't find her in and hold her tiny little shoulders and shake her stupid for not coming back to him herself, and then crush her to him and not let her go. He wants that more than anything. He wants to close his eyes and search, the way he has every day since he lost her, and finally be able to hold her spirit ribbon in his hands again. He wants to close his eyes.

Inoue plays with her dark-haired daughter on the swings, blissfully unaware. She can't feel it, Ichigo realises. She can't feel the way the world has changed completely in the space of nine seconds. Dread flares in him. Because if Inoue can't feel the ice in the air or the renewed spark of life in the world, maybe it's not – her. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe Ichigo just needs so badly to see those big dark eyes again that he wants to think this is –

_Fuck it_, Ichigo thinks, and closes his eyes.

-3

The hole in the world is shrinking.

The second time Renji feels it, it saves him. He has teetered on the edge of some dark hurricane within himself for too many years, and this second wave of cold, burning ice breathes life back into him. Renji feels alive for the first time in what seems like forever, since he first felt this burst of life spark into existence all those years ago. Something, somewhere in a world beside his is calling to him through a layer of glass and he doesn't need two guesses to know it's her. It's not a passing glimmer of hope this time. This is the real thing, Renji knows. This is her spiritual pressure, wherever she is in all of existence, and whether she knows it or not it's like a beacon of sheer light to him, as it always was before.

And although the soothing wave of her soul brushing against his own across entire worlds fades away minutes later, Renji has come back from the dead.

-3

Ichigo sees that himself when he crashes through the doors of the sixth division vice-captain quarters half an hour later.

"Renji-" he breathes, and then he looks at him and sees all the confirmation he needs on Renji's face. Renji is smirking.

"Forgot the proper way to use a door, dumbass?"

"Forgot the proper way to greet someone who's saved your ass more times than you've had hot dinners, _dumbass_?"

"To be fair man, I ain't had a lot of hot dinners."

Their exchange is quick and effortless as always, and Ichigo realises that the last four seconds in Renji's office have been easier and more comfortable than the last twenty years surrounded by friends and family in Karakura. Ichigo grins, properly grins, in what feels like the first time in infinity. "Long time no see Renji."

"About twenty of your human years, isn't it? You're looking old." Renji doesn't need to ask why he's here. He can see it in his face. The resolve he hasn't seen in those eyes since they lost Rukia – _Rukia, Rukia, Rukia, he can finally think and speak her name without his heart aching_ – is back. Ichigo should be almost forty years old, but in this moment of sheer joy he looks fifteen again.

"I ain't that old," Ichigo tries to scowl, but fails miserably because this smile is threatening to split his face in half. "Being a human shinigami seems to slow down the whole nasty aging process. Whatever, you're a relic compared to me anyway."

"I prefer 'wise and experienced.' You goddamn infant."

There's something soulful and poignant about the fact that they can go decades without speaking to each other, only to slip back into their routine instantly now, as though nothing has changed between them. And it hasn't, they know. If they were the touchy-feely type, they'd probably hug.

"Renji," Ichigo breathes, dropping their traditional ribbing. "She's alive. I don't know how but she-"

"I knew it!" Renji half screams and half laughs, something manic and joyful all at once. "I knew it! Reincarnation, you beautiful little bitch!"

"Reincarnation?" Ichigo shouts over Renji, his own excitement rising. "That explains it! I thought her spirit ribbon was different somehow and this totally explai-"

"You saw her spirit ribbon?!" Renji laughs in disbelief. "Damn it, kid, they always said you were good!"

"I felt her spiritual pressure, they way you did I guess, and I closed my eyes and looked for it the way I've done every goddamn day for twenty-two years, and I found it." Renji doesn't interrupt this time, not even to make fun of the tears building under Ichigo's eyelashes, if only because he can feel the sting in his own. "And I followed it. It was difficult, and I couldn't pinpoint it exactly, but she's alive in the human world somewhere, Renji."

"I knew it," Renji whispers. "I fucking knew it." A tear spills down his cheek and he makes no effort to wipe it away. "Do you know where…?"

"It was gone before I could trace it properly. And it was fragmented," Ichigo explains, some of his earlier excitement crashing down on him now after the initial discovery. "It wasn't… it wasn't a shinigami ribbon anymore, but it didn't look a human ribbon either. It still had that crimson colour, just not so strong. And I could only hold onto pieces at a time."

They sit in silence after that. Nothing more needs to be said between them.

-3

The whole in the world is shrinking.

It seems almost irrelevant that they can't quite place her yet, that they can't say exactly where she is. Rukia is alive somewhere in the great expanse of the world, and it's enough for them to know that sooner or later, she'll find her way back to them, or them to her.

Because Ichigo knows innately that it has somehow always been that way with them; that there is something karmic about the way her soul is tied to his own. And Renji simply can't see the sense in a world where any greater power would let he and Rukia be apart for too long.


End file.
